In the wake of last week's ruling that Novell, and not SCO, controls the copyrights covering UNIX, Novell is reassuring Unix users that it has no plans to follow in SCO's footsteps. Given that the company is no longer in the business of selling UNIX, it has no reason to pursue any copyright claims.

That's the tricky part of the phrase "no plans to sue". "No plans to sue" means, "I don't think we will, but you never know the future....".

Not very confidence building, is it?

If Novell really means, "we will never sue" they should outright say that or not say anything at all since no-one expected them to sue (even if they had a case, which they know they don't, suing would terminate their GPLv2 license and thus kill SUSE). If they wanted good PR, they might even donate any copyrights they have to Unix to the Linux Foundation (not that it means anything since Caldera already did so and Linux is IP clean, but it would still be good PR).

I get the impression that Novell is lead by people who are either not very bright (beating Inspector Clouseau in clumsiness) or people who are very sly and two-faced. In either case, it's important to be wary since even a good natured fool can unintentially do harm.

Why do you automatically assume they would sue linux users? Linux is not unix,,, remember? They are reassuring Unix users....

But why wouldn't they sue, lets say, SCO for using unix parts without permission, in openserver or unixware.

Novell distributes a Linux distro... They arent going to sue linux users, the software is already GPL'd. Linux doesnt have anything to worry about... Its the Unix vendors that should make sure their ducks are in a row.

If Novell really means, "we will never sue" they should outright say that or not say anything at all since no-one expected them to sue (even if they had a case, which they know they don't, suing would terminate their GPLv2 license and thus kill SUSE). If they wanted good PR, they might even donate any copyrights they have to Unix to the Linux Foundation (not that it means anything since Caldera already did so and Linux is IP clean, but it would still be good PR).

Sigh!

(1) Linux is not a copy of Unix, it is at best a "work-alike", a "re-implementation". It wouldn't do anything for Linux if Novell donated Unix copyrights, because Linux is not a copy of Unix.

(2) Novell have already issued everyone who wants it a license to use SuSe Linux. It is called the GPL. It is not revokable.

(2) Novell have already issued everyone who wants it a license to use SuSe Linux. It is called the GPL. It is not revokable.

In some countries, perhaps. In most countries I know of (including the US and all the EU nations), the GPL is not a perpetual agreement, and can be ended when either party (owner of license or owner of IP) decides to end it.